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WEST VALLEY CITY -- After a night-long search, a missing 11-year-old boy was found safe and sound.
The all-out search got underway in West Valley City after the boy was reported missing around 11:30 Monday night. Officers went door to door looking for the child and checked with classmates, but it was a passer-by who spotted him walking in the rain.
Eleven-year-old Jacob Bradley Oliver lives in a neighborhood near 3900 South and 1400 West. Tuesday morning around 8:30, he was found about a block east, in the Meadowbrook trailer park by an employee of the park on his way to work.
Police say the man recognized the boy from the endangered child alert seen on the news and picked the boy up. He then called police and notified them that the child was safe.
Capt. Tom McLachlan, with the West Valley City Police Department, said, "He said he was at a friend's house. We are interviewing him to find out exactly where this house was, what he did when he left, basically everything he did when he left school yesterday afternoon until this morning."
Oliver had last been seen at Granger Elementary School at 3:50 Monday afternoon.
Police say they still don't know why the boy never returned home last night, but we spoke with his step-mother off camera, and she says he's a troubled child who has had some problems with his living situation.
She says he has run away once before but never for this long. She also says she never expected the situation to escalate to the point it did with the dozens of police officers looking for him.
West Valley police say regardless of the resources spent, they're just happy he's OK.
"We're very happy he's OK. It took a lot of police resources and everybody else's time to get this resolved, but you're always glad when it's resolved on the positive side."
West Valley police say they will be looking into Oliver's living situation to make sure everything is OK there, and as long as it is, he will be taken home.
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Story compiled with information from Marc Giauque and Shara Park.
